Yankees' ticket prices skyrocket on Derek Jeter news

Longtime baseball superstar Derek Jeter's announcement late Wednesday that he will leave the game after 2014 pushed New York Yankees' ticket prices higher and sent the price tag for select games skyrocketing.

Within two hours of Jeter's announcement that 2014 will be his last season, the average ticket price for the Yankees' last regular-season game—scheduled for Sept. 28 against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park—jumped more than 160 percent to $803.

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New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter as a rookie in 1995.

Early Thursday morning, the average ticket price for the Yankees' final 2014 home game in New York, scheduled for Sept. 25 against the Baltimore Orioles, was listed at more than $1,200 on TiqIQ, an online ticket portal.

According to Chris Matcovich, vice president of data and communications at TiqIQ, the average ticket price for a Yankees' home game during the 2014 season increased to more than $217 from $206 within just a couple hours of the retirement news.

The surge in prices was caused by a simultaneous decrease in ticket inventory and increase in demand as brokers raced to pull down speculative online ticket quotes—what they had believed to be good offer prices for tickets prior to Jeter's retirement announcement—before fast-clicking fans could take them up on old quotes, said Matcovich.

"Anywhere from five to 10 minutes after the announcement, brokers started pulling down tickets," he said. "We saw that most of their websites were showing a 404 error."

Some buyers, though, were quick enough to purchase lower-priced tickets, said Matcovich.

"Those people got good deals," he said.

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Matcovich said he has never seen a player in any sport single-handedly move a team's ticket prices as much as Jeter did on Wednesday.

"We have seen it a little bit when players are traded, like when Carmelo Anthony was traded to the Knicks," said Matcovich, referencing the star NBA forward. "But we haven't seen anything on this level."

According to TiqIQ, the average ticket price for Jeter's last regular-season home game has already reached more than 2½ times the peak average price for the final home game of all-star pitcher Mariano Rivera, who debuted with the Yankees in 1995, the same year as Jeter, and retired last year after 19 seasons with the team.

Tickets for Rivera's final home game reached $467 in early March of last year, before falling nearly 50 percent to $237 on the day of the game in late September, according to TiqIQ.

Matcovich said that while interest in Jeter's final game may be higher than for Rivera's, a drop in Yankees' ticket prices could still occur, especially if Jeter's last scheduled game turns out not to be his final outing.

"If this goes to August or September, and it looks like the Yankees are going to the playoffs, then these tickets are not going to be as valuable as they are now," he said.

In a post on his Facebook page on Wednesday, Jeter said: "From the time I was a kid, my dream was always vivid and it never changed: I was going to be the shortstop of the New York Yankees. It started as an empty canvas more than 20 years ago, and now that I look at it, it's almost complete."